Successful domestic and international trade relies on the efficient and cost-effective shipment of both finished and unfinished goods of different sizes in various quantities. Many of these articles, both unfinished and finished, must be moved on flat transport structures such as pallets or skids that can be readily moved by heavy machinery such as a forklift, a pallet jack or a crane.
In order that shipping efficiency may be maximized at the lowest possible cost, the attachment of pallet components to one another must be undertaken quickly without compromising security or safety. Workers accordingly require a pallet fastening system that requires the least amount of effort to achieve complete fastening.
Conventional pallet fastening methods typically rely on either adhesive fastening or on mechanical fasteners such as nails, conventional screws or lag bolts. Adhesive fastening relies on permanent adhesives such as wood glue. While being effective at adhesion, the use of permanent adhesives makes disassembly very difficult and often results in damage to the pallet components.
Challenges faced by industries relying on mechanical fastening include different types of tools needed to install these fasteners. Nail fasteners result in cracked or damaged pallets. A further challenge is related to the disassembly of pallets once assembled, the challenge often including the removal of nails or the removal of threaded fasteners having stripped or damage fastener heads. Each of these challenges has the potential for increasing assembly cost to manufacturers because of added tooling as well as extra assembly and disassembly time.
Modern demands on the design and construction of pallet fasteners mean that new pallet fastener solutions need to contribute to ease of assembly as used in production (particularly in view of increasing automation) and provide excellent attachment strength, while maintaining high reliability and low production costs. Compliance with the need for standardization and the requirements of the shipping industry has proved challenging to current pallet fastener designs.
Accordingly, and as is the case in many industries, known approaches to attaching pallet components together are often undesirable and impractical. An improved methods for attaching two pallet components together remains wanting.